Personal Demon

HOPE: CHAOS-CRAZED

I stood in the panic room, my brain a swirl of perfect chaos.

Paige’s thoughts were loudest, a frightened jumble of self-doubt. Did I do that right? Am I missing something? What if I’m making it worse? Where’s the ambulance?

Benicio’s thoughts were too muddled to distinguish, one intense wave after another. Under that, I could pick up Karl’s steady throb of anger and distress.

Then there was the man on the floor. Dying…His soul, slipping from his body, the grief and anxiety and fear of the others swirling around him, a cocktail more potent than anything I ever dreamed of. I drank it in, oblivious to my surroundings. I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten in there. Couldn’t remember why I was there. Couldn’t even remember who this man was, lying on the floor, dying. All that mattered was that he was dying and when he did, the reward would be beyond imagining.

Karl was yelling about getting someone to leave. Not me. He wouldn’t do that-wouldn’t pull me away, not when death was so close, hanging in the air…

This was what I was made for. This was where I belonged, in the center of the whirlwind, drinking it in…

“You need to get her out of here.” Benicio’s voice.

“You don’t think I’m trying?” Karl’s snarl.

The room spun, pulling me under.

“It’s the chaos.” Benicio. “She’s-”

“I know what’s happening.” Karl. “And apparently you do too.”

His anger spiked and I shuddered. So delicious, so perfectly-Hands went around my waist. Lifted me. I lashed out with everything I had. The arms only gripped tighter and carried me, kicking and punching and screaming, from the room, out two doors, into the bright glare of a white room.

The chaos lifeline snapped under the glare of those bathroom lights. I looked up and saw my reflection-a nightmarish version of myself, my hair wild, lips pulled back in a snarl, face contorted with pure animal rage.

The face of a demon.

Karl carried me into the bedroom. He lowered me onto the bed, and as I gulped air, my throat raw from screaming, I struggled to block the memory of my reflection, telling myself it’d been some hellish trick of my mind.

The last five minutes flooded back. What I’d felt in that room. What I’d thought. All of it as alien as that horror in the mirror and yet, like the reflection, recognizable.

“K-K-Karl…”

I looked up, my eyes filled with tears of shame, and could see only a watery figure. I felt his arms around me as he crouched, pulling my face against his chest.

“Shh, shh, shh.”

“I-I-I-”

“Shhh.”

I forced my head up, to find his face, to look him in the eyes.

“I wanted him to die, Karl. I couldn’t even remember who he was. A man I know, I like, and I wanted him to die so I could feed off-”

My head jolted forward, gorge rising, and before I could stop it, I threw up on him.

“Oh God, oh God, I’m so-”

He took my chin and lifted it, looking me in the eye. “It’s okay, Hope.”

With his free hand, he deftly unbuttoned his shirt, peeled it off and tossed it on the bed, never breaking eye contact. Thinking of that-throwing a vomit-covered shirt onto Benicio Cortez’s Egyptian cotton sheets-I had to bite back a surge of hysterical laughter. My eyes filled at the same time and I started shaking so badly I couldn’t breathe.

My mind was back in that room, wallowing in the chaos, gulping it down, seeing Troy…

A sudden vision shoved the memory aside. I was peering through bushes, watching a dark-haired young man on a restaurant patio, eating a burger with one hand, writing with the other, gaze fixed on a book. Something about him looked familiar.

The vision faded and I saw Troy again, dying. Then I saw him sitting across from me, laughing and flirting, and I was thinking what a nice guy he was, how he was someone I’d like to know better, someone I…

Wanted to watch die?

My stomach heaved, but there was nothing left.

Karl pulled my face back to his. I struggled to understand him.

“Focus on me, Hope. On what I’m showing you.”

His face swam in front of me, then vanished, and I was behind the bushes again. I could see my hand, holding back a branch as I peered through. My fingers were long and slender, masculine but smooth, not a child’s but not yet a man’s.

“Hey!” a voice boomed. “So this is where you’re hiding.”

The dark-haired man at the table lifted his head, lips curving in a crooked smile that finally made the recognition click. Jeremy Danvers, the werewolf Alpha. Another young man, thickset and muscular, grabbed him in a headlock, leaned over, snatched Jeremy’s drink, took a swig and made a face.

“Get this man a beer,” he called to two others stepping onto the patio.

“Next year,” Jeremy said. “When I can legally-”

“Stop being so damned proper. It’s hot. I’m buying you a beer. You’re drinking it.”

The man swung a chair around and plunked down.

“Please, sit, Antonio,” Jeremy said. “No, you aren’t interrupting my work at all.”

They continued bantering as the other young men joined them, but the conversation faded under the swirling emotions from the watcher. Envy. Longing. Loneliness. His fingers whitened on the branch as he strained to listen, lapping up the camaraderie from the patio, caught up in his feelings. Then others overlapped-those of an adult looking back on the memory. Regret, grief and guilt, as intense as the chaos of the panic room, and it swept me along, giving me something to feed on, a rich substitute devoid of moral consequences.

After a moment, though, it wasn’t enough and the shaking started anew, my chest constricting, breathing ragged-

“Focus, Hope. Focus on me.”

Another vision. This one black emptiness. Only voices. One I knew, but much younger than I’d ever heard it.

“You don’t understand, Dad.”

“Yes, I do. You’re the one who doesn’t. The Pack isn’t for us.”

“It’s for werewolves, isn’t it? And we’re werewolves. That’s how it’s supposed to be-living like that, with others, others like us. I feel it-”

“It’s an instinct. You have to fight it. Rise above it. It’s not a club with a special handshake, Karl. They won’t let us in. They’d kill us.”

“How do you know that if you’ve never tried?”

“I know. We have to stay out of their way. We have to-”

Run. Always running. The coward’s way.

Are you calling your father a coward?

No, of course not. I’d never…

The thoughts disintegrated into a muddle of rage and guilt. I drank it up, knowing it was a memory, something Karl was offering me, a gift…

When my stomach stopped churning, I rubbed my hands over my face.

“I-I think I’m okay now,” I said. “Can we-?”

“Leave?” He got up from his crouch and rolled his shoulders, working out the kinks. “I plan to.”

I saw the back of a paramedic who’d just passed through with the stretcher. I got up, wanting to ask how Troy was, but my knees wobbled and Karl had to catch me.

Paige appeared in the doorway. She managed a wan smile, and motioned for Karl to sit me back on the bed. As she checked my pulse, I flashed back to the panic room, to how I’d left it, over Karl’s shoulder, flailing like a chaos-crazed demon. Paige had seen that. They saw, and now they knew my secret.

But as shame flooded me, I remembered how they knew. Not from Karl, who’d never betray my secret. From Benicio. Who’d told Karl to get me out of the room. Who had thrown me into a chaotic situation, knowing I’d thrive on it and, like a junkie, want more.

He’d used me just as much as Tristan had. There was a difference between seducing a prospective employee with promises of huge bonuses and preying on her weaknesses, feeding her the drugs she wants, knowing she’ll become addicted.

Lucas walked in, but my gaze went past him to Benicio. Then I looked away. I didn’t want to lay the blame on him. So what if he’d tempted me? I wanted to be above temptation. In control. Responsible.

“I’ll be at the hospital,” Benicio said to Lucas. “I want you and Paige-” A sharp intake of breath. “Your brothers.”

“I’ll warn them.”

“I should have thought-”

“I’ll look after it, Papá. You go with Troy. I’ll have guards meet you at the hospital.”

After Benicio left, I looked up to see Lucas lost in thought as Paige walked over to him. He murmured something to her, then turned to Karl.

“I hate to ask…” he began.

“Then don’t,” Karl growled. “We’ve done more than enough already and Hope has paid more than-”

“What do you need?” I cut in. I met Karl’s gaze. “Please.”

“No.”

My insides twisted, and I had to swallow to keep from heaving again.

He laid his hand on mine, cupped in my lap. “You’ve done enough, Hope.”

“I haven’t,” I whispered, too low for the others to hear. “I need to help. To finish this by doing something good.”

A moment’s silence as he studied me. Then he turned to Lucas. “One last favor. And I do consider it a favor.”

“It is,” Lucas said. “I need to find my brothers-”

“And what, you want us to make phone calls? Get your Cabal flunkies out of their beds-”

“No. We need to track them down and warn them. In person. Just find them, please, Karl. Then you can go.”

WE DROVE KARL’S rental, following Lucas as he made calls, trying to locate his brothers. Karl continued to grumble-why did we have to find them when a direct phone call would give them quicker warning? I agreed, but in Lucas’s defense, put forward possible explanations. Karl was having none of it. Not only was he worried about me, but playing tracking dog for a thirty-year-old sorcerer chafed. He had enough trouble obeying his Alpha.

The reminder of Jeremy brought back the memories Karl had shown me, and I longed to ask what they meant. This wasn’t the time. I wasn’t sure there’d ever be a time. Karl had only shown me that in a desperate attempt to yank me out of a dark place.

We’d just left the neighborhood when Lucas called my cell.

“Hector is at home,” he said. “Paige and I will visit him. Carlos is out for the evening, and will be difficult to locate, so I’m going to ask you two to go see William, who was apparently working late. My father’s other bodyguard, Griffin, will meet you at the office and escort you inside.”

“Okay…”

I could understand why Lucas wouldn’t want a security team swooping in and alarming Hector’s family at home, but this made no sense. If William was in the office, there was an entire security division on site to check on him and take him into protective custody.

“Why don’t we find Carlos?” I said. “If he’s harder to track, Karl would be perfect.”

“We know where the others should be. So I’d like to handle them first.”

Karl shot me a look. “As long as he doesn’t expect me to track Carlos after we talk to William.”

“I heard that,” Lucas said. “Tell Karl no. Once you’ve found William and turned him over to Griffin’s care, I won’t ask any more of either of you. If William isn’t at the office, though, I’d like Karl to try to ascertain, by scent, whether he was there recently. And, Hope, if you could check for any visions…”

In other words, he suspected William might have been kidnapped…or worse.

“If he is gone,” Lucas said. “Please ask Karl to track him as far as possible, then contact me.”